They shoot airmen, sometimes

My neighbour died alone
in a settler’s cottage on a hill
with a dam that wouldn’t repair

he went after her

although for a while
she moved the keys around
with a silence that wouldn’t mend

not that he minded

her grace in easy tides
had always knocked him sideways
bent him like a conjurer’s hoop

straightened a smile

when he remembered landing
their courtesy of not shooting him
for all the sins that dropped

on the Germany runs

she cut the prison wire off
on the dance floor in Echuca
laughing holding rubbing her feet

captivity got him rich

making love all the way south
to range strung returned soldier farms
bridled away in hills so fantasy green

that photos singed

last sighted as a pride
collecting wood from the boundary
waving hello and goodbye

we should have talked more

but those gibbous moments
rattle like coins in a head
now left to loosely wonder

if anyone dies alone,  really

 

 

 

The Fotheringhams were my nearest neighbours for many years, a few kilometres up the track. Des was from a Wimmera desert farm, he was shot down over Europe and spent many years in a POW camp. After the camp was liberated he discovered the airforce had continued to pay his navigator salary for the three years he was imprisoned. He was surprised by that. He died a few months after Frances. He battled the leak in the orchard dam for two decades.

 

First published in somnia.blue December 2017 edited by C S Hughes
Walking Through Fences, Flying Island Books ASM & Cerberus 2018

I remain indebted to C S Hughes who created a journal to give several of my poems a place to live.

Art by Theodore Major, ‘Man in a storm’.